


Paint

by petercapaldiscoiffure



Series: Emeline Trevelyan [6]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-24
Updated: 2015-01-24
Packaged: 2018-03-08 20:05:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3221693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petercapaldiscoiffure/pseuds/petercapaldiscoiffure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He marks me, she thinks, and I mark him."</p><p>Iron Bull teaches the Inquisitor how to paint his vitaar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint

**Author's Note:**

> because i think a lot about the mysterious sex scene vitaar (that also inexplicably shows up under a set of armor or two? i've just...elected to ignore that.)

**H** e tells her she'll learn to paint him, and she balks. It's too intricate, lines crossing and hatching up and down his skin - surely she can't memorize the exact pattern? But he says he'll teach her, and if it's less than perfect at first - well, they have time, nights and weeks and months ahead of them. And she's traced it countless times with her fingers before. She'll get it. 

\---

It's a Qunari thing, he says, that first night when he's laying out the paint and the brushes. It calms you, centers you, focuses your mind on the person in front of you and the task at hand - yes, even that one.  _A task? Well, isn't that romantic_ , she replies. Of course she knows even before it leaves her mouth - romance is entirely beside the point, a complete non-factor. This is something...different. He just laughs. 

So he takes a wet cloth and wipes her down, shoulder to shoulder, collarbone to belly button and over each arm -  _you'll understand it better if you feel it, and you have to be clean._  Her flesh pebbles at the wash of cool air on damp skin.

_But isn't it poison?_

_Not this kind, no._

And he dips the brush in the inky black pool of paint, drawing her eyes to where he lays down the first patterns. He tells her to picture in her mind what he's tracing as he's tracing it -  _pay attention, you'll only wear this once._

First it's octagons and hexagons in a honeycomb, and she thinks of the bees she hates so much, and then she thinks of honey, which she enjoys rather more. She shivers at the touch of the paint, surprised - it's not cool but oddly warm, skin relaxing where it's coated in the black stripes. Then it's swoops of dark waves along the length of her arm, and she follows them with her mind from shoulder to elbow, thinks of the ocean she only saw so rarely after she was taken to the Circle, and the salt air she could smell from her dormitory.

After some time and when he's done, she realizes she's closed her eyes completely and when she's opened them she's surprised to find she knows the patterns on her skin almost as surely as if she'd been watching the whole time. Here are the bees' little honeycombs, there is the eastern sea, and up along here is the Chantry tower of Val Royeaux. Of course they're none of these things, these esoteric Qunari symbols she can't begin to truly understand outside of the fact that they mean something to the man in front of her. But it's a start. 

When he hands her the cloth, freshly rinsed and ready for him, she's careful and slow. This  _is_  a ritual, and she'll respect it, even if she doesn't entirely understand it yet. And there is...something, here. She can feel the slow steady beat of his heart under her hands, the rise and fall of his chest, and somehow his ease is enough to calm even her nervous hands. And then she begins to paint him for the first time.

It's not perfect, of course. She tries to match the sensation of her hand guiding the brush to the sense memory of it gliding along her own flesh, and looks down often for reference. Still, it's a little unsteady. The lines are slightly too thick, compared to his own applications, and aligning the hexagons is trickier than she anticipated. But - he's right. It does focus her. Soon all she sees is black rising and falling and curving down across his pale scarred skin, and the discomfort from kneeling so long is lost in the haze of his body heat melting into hers and back again.   

Later, he'll tell her that while mastery is always worth seeking, in this particular instance the occasional little imperfections are worthwhile too, reminders of the person you're serving - or that's serving you.

She'll take this to heart, eventually, and in the months to come starts adding her own touches. Little impressions of flowers in the center of her honeycomb whorls, a particular flick at the end of the waves down his biceps. Never too far from the original motif, hardly even noticeable, but just enough.

 _He marks me,_ she thinks, _and I mark him._


End file.
